For the early Fathers of the Church there was only one spirituality, the spirituality of Jesus Christ, who died and rose again, and who is pouring out his Spirit over the world. As time went on, the richness of the mystery of Christ tended to be differentiated. Christ is too big a reality to be fully expressed by any one individual or any one vocation. Yet all expressions, all vocations, must be rooted in him.

The apostolic expression was powerful in the early Church and is especially strong again today as it works for world peace, justice, and service of the poor. On the other hand, there are always persons who are called by the Spirit to a greater participation in the mystery of Christ's silence and solitude through a life organized for the growth of contemplation. There is no opposition between action and contemplation. Rather, it is a question of emphasis and of one's aptitude and vocation from God. The institutional life-styles that gradually evolved over the centuries have become known as the active and contemplative lives.

But there are further differentiations. Various religious move 

ments have been raised up by the Spirit in the course of the centuries to meet certain needs of the time. Each movement has a special spirituality that goes back to the particular vision of its founder. But these particularities must not be emphasized to the detriment of the ultimate spirituality which belongs to every Christian. This ultimate reality is the indwelling Spirit who makes of us a temple of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This one point needs to be strongly emphasized: every Christian, by virtue of the grace of baptism, has the vocation to oneness with the Father through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit.

Everyone needs some kind of practice in order to accomplish this vocation. Obviously, a rule of life cannot be as detailed for those living in the world as it is for people in a monastery. But everyone has to build his or her own kind of enclosure as far as one's duties allow, by setting aside a certain amount of time every day for prayer and spiritual reading. Also, perhaps, one may dedicate a day every month, and a week every year, to being alone with the Lord. Jesus himself encouraged this in the Gospel when he said to the apostles, "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while" (Mark 6:31 ).

It is difficult to establish a rule of life to which one is faithful without the help of other similarly minded persons. A spiritual friend or a prayer group sharing similar values can be a great help in maintaining one's enthusiasm for growth in union with Christ. This help can be mutually sustaining during the inevitable slacking-off periods that occur because of circumstances or human weakness. All these particular recommendations could be summed up by saying that a contemplative understanding of Christ's teaching has to be firmly grounded in experience. There are two kinds of spiritual experience which might cause confusion unless we distinguish them carefully: one is interior, the other active. The spiritual experience that comes through the development of interior prayer is the result of the influx of divine love and the contemplative gifts of the Holy Spirit. Divine love illumines the mysteries of faith and enables one to begin to taste the sweetness and goodness of God through the gift of wisdom. This awakens enthusiasm in the whole of one's being.

The second kind of spiritual experience translates that enthusiasm into concrete action. This is what is meant by the practice of virtue. We do not practice virtue for its own sake, although it is helpful in learning to calm our emotions and to dispose us for contemplation. We practice virtue out of love for Christ. One of the best ways to do this is to seek God's will as it manifests itself in ordinary circumstances and events. This seeking to please God and to give up the obstacles in us which prevent us from doing his will with alacrity are essential to Christian practice. Without this effort in our daily lives, one can doubt the genuine character of the interior experiences, however glamorous or inspiring. Interior experience is geared to action. It is designed to soften up our self-centered dispositions, to deliver us from what is compulsive in our motivation, and to open us up completely to God and to the genuine service of others.

The criterion of true Christian spirituality, affirmed by the Gospel over and over again, is the practical and concrete love of neighbor which leads us to make the sacrifice of our own desires, convenience, and comfort, in order to meet the needs of others. Christ's commandment goes even further: "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12). What is this essential aspect of Christ's love, and how can we live it?

The love of Christ manifested itself in his sheer vulnerability. The crucifix is the sign and expression of the total vulnerability of Jesus: the outstretched arms, the open heart, the forgiveness of everything and everyone. This sheer vulnerability made him wide open both to suffering and to joy.

It was this vulnerability that caused him to experience the pain of Judas' betrayal, as well as the joy of celebrating the Pasch with his disciples.

If there had been no possibility of betrayal, there could have been no Eucharist. If the disciples were to be admitted to his intimate friendship, there could only be loneliness and disappointment when they all abandoned him and fled. Only in the heart of one with boundless readiness to forgive could there have been the pain of Peter's triple denial, and afterwards the joy of reinstating him as chief of the apostles.

If Jesus were to hear a word of repentance from the good thief, he had to listen to the mockery of the bad thief.

If Jesus were to receive the consoling sympathy of the women of Jerusalem, he had to endure the hatred and contempt of those who took pleasure in his death.

If it had not been possible for him to experience abandonment by the Father, there could not have been an infinite depth to his total gift of himself to the Father.

If there had not been a soldier to open his side with the lance, there could have been no water and blood, symbols of the lifegiving sacraments, flowing from his side.

If Jesus had not actually died on the Cross, the holy women would not have anointed his body for burial.

If he had not been buried in the tomb, he could not have risen from the dead.

Vulnerability means to be hurt over and over again without seeking to love less, but more. Divine love is sheer vulnerability--sheer openness to giving. Hence, when it enters the world, either in the person of Jesus or in one of his disciples, it is certain to encounter persecution--death many times over. But it will also encounter the joy of ever rising again. "For love is stronger than death . . . Many waters cannot quench it" (Song of Sol. 8:6-7). Being vulnerable means loving one another as Christ loved us. If we did not have to forgive people, we would have no way of manifesting God's forgiveness toward us. People who injure us are doing us a great favor because they are providing us with the opportunity of passing on the mercy that we have received. By showing mercy, we increase the mercy we receive. The best way to receive divine love is to give it away, and the more we pass on, the more we increase our capacity to receive.

Scripture speaks of the human race as "all flesh" (Gen. 9:11) to emphasize its corporate identity. Paul taught that the whole human family suffered because of the action of one man and was redeemed through the action of one man, namely, Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:12-19). While this intuition into the oneness of the human family is extremely important, we must also emphasize the fact that we are saved not only as a vast multitude, but individually, one by one. There needs to be a balance between these two insights. There is a personal and a social dimension to every human being. We need to be conscious of our responsibility to both.

Paul, in developing the idea of the human body as an image of the Mystical Body of Christ, wrote, "If one member suffers, all suffer together" (I Cor. 12:26). The organic oneness of the human family achieved still greater unity by being incorporated into God's Son through his incarnation and resurrection. This oneness of the human family is an aspect of the mystery of Christ that needs strong emphasis today. It cuts across the differences of race, creed, color, or nationality. It requires us to respect religious and cultural differences rather than oppose them. Moreover, these differences are often complementary when properly understood, and point to the cosmic Christ. The gospel parable of the Good Samaritan means that our neighbor is anyone at all--anywhere--who is in need. In the Old Testament we are told, "When you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh" (Isa. 58:7). In other words, anyone who is suffering is one of us. We should feel the weight of his or her need because it is also our own.

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Excerpted from The Heart of the World by Fr. Thomas Keating

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